Campaign for Deaf Access:
Expanding Communication in Health Care
Project Summary
Our “Campaign for Deaf Access” is designed to involve law, social science, and pre-medical students in collaborative research and advocacy in the area of health-care access for deaf people in our region. We draw on interdisciplinary thought in the law, medicine, Disability Studies, and social research, exploring the distinctive “lens” that characterizes each area and offering a model for collaboration among professionals across fields and with the client constituencies they serve. Students enrolled in the Law School’s Disability Rights Clinic work with students in social science and Disability Studies (who have the option to enroll in a practicum on “Research for Social Change”) and with faculty directors in the College of Law, Maxwell School for Citizenship and Public Affairs, and Upstate Medical University’s Center for Bioethics and Medical Humanities.
The project focuses on the legal, social, and organizational foundations of access to health care for deaf people. The landmark Americans with Disabilities Act, passed in 1990, stands as both a signal achievement of the Disability Rights movement and guarantees communication access for deaf people who seek medical care. As with any legislation, however, achievement of the intent of the ADA--full social inclusion for people with disabilities--will depend on the implementation of the legislation, a fundamentally social process. Professor Michael Schwartz’s research on deaf people’s experiences with health care makes clear that significant problems remain. He has also found that litigation—even when successful—tends not to produce lasting solutions to these problems. Therefore, we are now investigating the professional side of these encounters, in order to learn more about how health-care providers approach their encounters with deaf patients, and how the structure and organization of medical work may promote or block access to information and care.
Our goal for the “Campaign” is to promote conversation and mutual learning among patients who communicate differently and community health-care workers of various sorts (not only physicians but also nursing, technical, and medical office staff). We hope to raise awareness of Deaf culture and ADA law among health-care workers, and also to consider the everyday challenges of medical work that may stand in the way of positive changes toward full communication access.
Faculty Team:
Spring 2010 Activities
Lennard Davis Visits SU
With the support of Imagining America and The Center on Human Policy, Law and Disability Studies), we invited renowned Deaf/Disability Studies scholar, Lennard J. Davis, to join us in late April for a series of conversations about communication access in health care for d/Deaf patients.
- Thursday, April 29, 5:00 – 7:00 pm
Public lecture: “Deaf World, Hearing World: The Two Cultures”
Location: Institute for Human Performance Atrium - 505 Irving Avenue
(between Harrison and Madison – free parking in lot after 4 p.m.)
- Friday, April 30, 9:15 – 11:00 am
Informal discussion: “Is Deafness a Disability?”
Location: 341 Eggers Hall, Maxwell School, Syracuse University
- Friday, April 30, 12 noon – 1:00 pm
Brown bag: "The Standard Patient? The Deaf Person in the Medical World"
Location: Rooms 2509-2510 Setnor Bldg., Upstate Medical University
(annex to Weiskotten Hall, 766 Irving Ave. at Waverly)
Lennard J. Davis is Professor in the English Department in the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In addition, he is Professor of Disability and Human Development in the School of Applied Health Sciences of the University of Illinois at Chicago, as well as Professor of Medical Education in the College of Medicine. He is also director of Project Biocultures a think-tank devoted to issues around the intersection of culture, medicine, disability, biotechnology, and the biosphere. Davis is the author of two works on the novel--Factual Fictions: The Origins of the English Novel and Resisting Novels: Fiction and Ideology and co-editor of Left Politics and the Literary Profession. His works on disability include Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body and The Disability Studies Reader. His memoir My Sense of Silence describes his childhood in a Deaf family. Davis has also edited his parents’ correspondence Shall I Say a Kiss: The Courtship Letters of a Deaf Couple, 1936-38. Davis has also been a commentator on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, and appeared on Morning Edition, This American Life, Odyssey, The Leonard Lopate Show and other NPR affiliates. His current interests include disability-related issues; literary and cultural theory; genetics, race, identity; and biocultural issues.
Sponsored by:
Campaign for Deaf Access: Expanding Communication in Health Care
Imagining America, Syracuse University
The Center on Human Policy, Law and Disability Studies, Syracuse University
Co-sponsors:
Beyond Compliance Coordinating Committee (BCCC); disAbility Law Society;
Disability Law and Policy Program